Lightmap Resolution?
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Lightmap Resolution?
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| Those of you working with lightmaps a lot in your levels... what sort of lightmap resolution do you think is an acceptable minimum? I mean, in terms of pixels per VIRTUAL METRE. That is, if you are in a virtual room 6 metres by 6 metres, normal height, how many pixels across per wall do you think would look okay? I'm talking minimums before it looks really shoddy. What sort of resolutions are you working at, on average? Or is that a REALLY vague question? |
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| It's not really a Meter per Texel Question, more a number of lights and level complexity matter IMHO. I use 512*512 for all Indoor Levels, this works pretty good. At least in Maplet I found it's looking better when the texels are not too small so their contours are softer. |
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| Why not try a few and see what looks good? Not trying to be a smart ass, but it really can't take that long... |
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| I use 256*256 when arranging the scene then usually 512*512 for a final render. |
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| That's a pretty vague question because, as with any other sort of resolution (textures, polygon counts, etc.) an acceptable minimum depends on a large number of factors, none of which you really specified. For example, how close is the camera to your level surfaces? Fairly obviously, you will need higher res lightmaps in situations where the camera gets really close. Then of course you used entirely subjective terms like "look okay" and "shoddy." As for the answers, holy crap! I'm guessing/assuming you are talking about a first-person shooter with a human player character, or at any rate something around that scale. In that case 512x512 is enormous for just one wall. I might use images that large for the main textures but certainly not for the lightmap. Going with a specific example, for a game and levels similar to "Quake 3" I'd be shooting for maybe two 512x512 lightmap textures for the entire level. |
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| Cheers. Yes, I was rather vague. I'm trying out something rather radical, which may mean the looks have to suffer, and may also mean that it falls flat on its face. Hopefully will have a demo sometime in the next ten years. :) Basically it's creatable, and destructible levels, within an FPS framework - to properly hybrid FPS with RTS. Got it working okay in initial tests, but no lighting as yet. Will hopefully make some good progress soon. As a just-as-vague question, how many 256x256 textures do you reckon you could have in memory, on a low-to-mid system nowadays? |
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| If you are going to do fully destructible environments, wouldn't it be better to stick with realtime light? And then prehaps throw in some realtime shadows. |
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| Maybe, but using that at the moment looks a bit crap. I've had some ideas about 'pseudo-realtime' lightmapping and I want to try them before I rule them out. I think realtime shadows would be really difficult because the environments are going to be different each game so I won't be able to use any templates. I don't want to kill performance if suddenly the computer generates hundreds of little shadows! |
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